JavaScript Leads The Pack As Most Popular Programming Language

What’s your favorite programming language? JavaScript? C++? Or are you aligned with the Python camp? Either way, you have a favorite language that you just prefer working in. It can have a big effect on the overall development ecosystem as more popular languages get more support from larger players like Google and Facebook. That’s why it’s super important to track programming language popularity over time.

RedMonk is one of the many analysis firms that tracks the popularity of programming languages. They look at the popularity of languages on GitHub and StackOverflow. They found that language popularity tends to correlate between the two. That still seems to be the case with both sources returning JavaScript as the victor.

For added clarification, here’s the top 20 programming languages as determined by RedMonk:

The guys at RedMonk go on to say that the top languages rarely change that much. It’s far more interesting to look at the turmoil happening in the lower rankings in the top 20. Over the past two years, many languages have dropped multiple ranks as other languages like Visual Basic 5 and ASP come into favor.

For comparison, the TIOBE Index is listing C as the most popular programming language in use at the moment. TIOBE bases their rankings off of the number of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors that cater to a specific language.

Both rankings are a good idea of how the popularity of programming languages are evolving. RedMonk’s rankings are far more interesting, however, because they look at the popularity on GitHub. A lot of the guys on there are hobbyist coders that may not influence the strict guidelines that determine the TIOBE Index.